Apple in Dutch antitrust spotlight for allegedly promoting own apps | Hacker News Reader

Apple in Dutch antitrust spotlight for allegedly promoting own apps

reuters.com

35 pointsT-A7 comments

> Apple said it treats all app developers equally.

But the point is that Apple apps have preferential treatment.

One example would be double-clicking the home button on a locked phone invokes apple pay. Why can't it invoke something else?

Personally, I would like to write my own apps (that didn't require permission to run and didn't explode in 7 days)

There's an infinite rabbit hole of "why can't..." extending to every platform. Apple's value proposition has never been about customizability.

Although you're right about the rabbit hole, this isn't about customizability. In relation to antitrust, if apple apps get preferential treatment it's a problem.

Maybe a more direct comparison would be apple bundling music, compared to Microsoft bundling IE in US vs Microsoft.

In US vs Microsoft, MS was accused of strong-arming OEMs into shipping IE instead of Netscape. The point was to permit OEMs to decide what software to preinstall on their own systems.

Apple doesn't license iOS so they can hardly be said to be strong-arming any OEM.

Now if Apple Music were wildly successful on Android and Apple was demanding that Samsung bundle Apple News in order to ship Apple Music, that would be a different story....

Double-pressing the power button in my case brings up cards in my Apple Wallet, some of which are credit cards, loyalty cards, boarding passes, and event passes. Apple Pay Cash is only one option.

> One example would be double-clicking the home button on a locked phone invokes apple pay. Why can't it invoke something else?

There is actually an investigation into this in Switzerland. All major banks have blocked Apple Pay and have rolled out their own payment solution. Apple has sued the Swiss solution for blocking Apple Pay and the Swiss banks have sued Apple for preferring Apple Pay.

afaik, no solution has been found.

On the platform that isn’t even on the majority of mobile phones. This investigation is going nowhere.

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